1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to distribution of multimedia content in a networked environment. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and methods for scheduling multimedia content for broadcast.
2. Description of Related Technology
The Internet comprises a web of computers and networks widely spread throughout the world. The Internet currently comprises millions of network connections, and is used by millions of people for business, education, entertainment, and/or basic communication purposes.
Digital content, such as sound recordings, songs, for example, are often transferred across the Internet. In addition to the basic transfer of song files, numerous network enabled radio stations have been introduced, which provide content to listeners at computers across the Internet. Network enabled radio has significantly increased the magnitude and variety of content to recipients, as compared to conventional over-the-air radio broadcasts. One of the most important technologies underlying Internet radio is streaming technology, some times called streaming media, which allows a user to view and hear digitized content—audio, as well as video and animation—as it downloads. The client receives the media in real time without having to wait for clips to be downloaded.
Streaming technology allows delivery of content in a variety of ways:                On-demand, wherein a pre-recorded clip is available to a user whenever he or she is interested;        Live—for example, live broadcasts of concerts or sporting events, wherein the user tunes in to whatever programming is being offered at a given time; and        Simulated live, wherein prerecorded clips are broadcast in the same manner that live content is.        
Streaming technology is based on the real-time streaming protocol (RTSP), a protocol for providing streaming multimedia, usually in one-to-many applications over unicast or multicast. RTSP employs the technique of streaming, which breaks data into packets sized according to the available bandwidth between client and server. When the client has received a sufficient number of packets, a practice known as buffering, the user's software can be playing one packet, decompressing another, and downloading yet another, thus enabling a user to listen to the real-time file almost immediately, as the media file downloads. Live data feeds, as well as stored clips are handled in this manner.
Just as over-the-air radio stations do, network-enabled radio stations program content for broadcast in advance. Thus, there exists a need for tools to create and manage program schedules for Internet audio broadcasts. Various methods and means have been proposed to meet this need. M. Day, L. Yeung, Method of delivering seamless and continuous presentation of multimedia data files to a target device by assembling and concatenating multimedia segments in memory, U.S. Pat. No. 5,996,105 (Nov. 30, 1999) describes generation of playlists, wherein a playlist constitutes a listing of segments selected for presentation. The reference is silent, however, as to how this is to be done.
V. Krishnan and G. Chang, Customized Internet radio, Proc. 9th International World Wide Web Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, (May 2000) describes a framework for managing and customizing audio broadcast content on the Internet. The described framework includes an Internet radio station that makes it possible to create and manage program schedules for Internet audio broadcasts. It allows specific radio stations or genre to be scheduled in time slots, and provides alerts and dynamic changes based on the availability of specified content according to a previously defined user profile. Thus, while a schedule is generated, the schedule only specifies time slots to be allocated to one radio station or another. There is no teaching or suggestion of rule-based scheduling of media objects such as songs and ads. Furthermore, while the scheduler can service more than one profile, the scheduler cannot schedule the actual media for several different channels or radio stations.
W. Sequeira, System and method for a master scheduler, U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,530 (Apr. 24, 2001) describes a scheduler wherein a programmer enters a programming schedule into a master scheduler's data models, whereupon the master scheduler processes the schedule and creates a number of tasks based on the schedule. Each task is then distributed to a slave task scheduler on the relevant media server for execution at the proper time. The slave task scheduler is adapted to track the tasks given to it, and to prepare a media device to send the scheduled information at the appropriate time. While the scheduler is capable of creating a list of tasks based on a schedule manually created by a programmer, there is no teaching or suggestion of a scheduler that actually creates the schedule, using rotation codes and patterns determined by a programmer and programming rules as inputs.
Y. Brown, M. Walker, Method of providing targeted advertisements to a computer mediated communications network, U.S. Pat. No. 6,601,041 (Jul. 29, 2003) describes a targeting system and method that is both intelligent and interactive. A queue builder generates priority queues according to predetermined rules and profile definitions. A queue manager receives the priority queues output from the queue builder and provides them to a computer-mediated communications network. While a queue builder assembles content segments into a queue according to a user profile and a set of rules, there is no description of a scheduler that monitors and updates a plurality of media streams using producer threads that generate tasks, and worker threads that consume the tasks from a queue and execute them.
M. Bookspan, S. Parasnis, P. Warrin, P. Poon, P. Patel, Scheduling presentation broadcasts in an integrated network environment, U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,888 (Oct. 21, 2003) describes a system that partially automates scheduling of a presentation broadcast over a network. The approach described, however, doesn't relate to streaming technology. The presentation is created using a computer program such as POWERPOINT (MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Redmond Wash.). Broadcast of the resulting file to specified recipients is facilitated through use of the calendaring capabilities of such products as MEETINGMAKER or OUTLOOK (both MICROSOFT CORPORATION).
It would thus be a significant advance in the art to provide a multimedia scheduler for streaming multimedia capable of scheduling and maintaining streams for a plurality of channels. It would be advantageous to provide music directors the capability of assigning rotation codes to the media items on their playlists. It would be a further advantage to provide the capability of scheduling actual items such as songs and ads based on the rotation codes, and a series of broadcast rules. It would also be beneficial for the scheduler to be able to service multiple channels or radio stations at the same time. Furthermore, it would also advance the art to provide a scheduler that periodically monitors and updates media streams of a predetermined length, adding media items as needed to maintain the predetermined length by means of producer and consumer threads and a task queue.